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American Cibic M^^omtion

SERIES 11, NO. 6 DECEMBER, 1912

NATIONAL PARKS

PRESIDENT TAFT ON A NATIONAL
PARKS BUREAU

Address to the American Civic Association

NATIONAL PARKS— THE NEED OF
THE FUTURE

Address by AMBASSADOR BRYCE

THE NEED FOR A BUREAU OF
NATIONAL PARKS

Addresses by HON. WALTER L. FISHER.
Secretary of the Interior

ARE NATIONAL PARKS WORTH
W^HILE?

Address by MR. J. HORACE McFARLAND,
President American Civic Association

DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL AND STATE PARKS
AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION
General Headquarters, Union Trust Building, Washington, D. C,

The American Civic Association's

Movement for a Bureau of

National Parks

In pursuance of its general policy in advocacy of
a larger development and use of the American
National Parks, their most efficient administration,
and the most effective means of exploiting them as
points to be visited and revisited by Americans, and
by tourists of the world at large, the American Civic
Association has, for the past three years, advocated
a specific project for the realization of these ends by
urging the creation of a Bureau of National Parks.

At its last two Conventions — those of 191 1 and
1912 — evening sessions were devoted almost exclu-
sively to the National Parks. At each of them, Hon.
Walter L. Fisher, Secretary of the Department of the
Interior, was the presiding officer. In this pamphlet
are printed the addresses, by distinguished speakers,
given at those two meetings. When the American
people make their demand insistent enough, it may
be expected that Congress will enact the legislation
necessary to make possible the large and dignified
administration and development of the National
Parks that is recommended in these several
addresses.

NATIONAL PARKS— NEED OF THE FUTURE 5

creation of a Bureau of National Parks, and this Associa-
tion was one of the chief agencies that interested itself in
pushing that bill. We had the bill considered in committee^
and I think the general result was quite favorable, but our
lawmakers — to indulge in a public confidence — were so
engaged in preparing for the presidential election that they
made little progress for us, and today we confront precisely
the same situation; and though I am here to report progress,
there is not very much progress to report. But I ask this
Association to continue to use all the influence in its power
to see that some effective means is provided to improve
these conditions, and to apply sound principles of admin-
istration to our National Parks System.

I cannot claim to be intimately versed in the diplomatic
history of our country, but I can safely say that I think the
highest compUment that Great Britain has ever paid us in
diplomatic matters was when she appointed as Ambassador
to the United States the author of the ''American Com-
monwealth."

I have heard his expected departure from this country
discussed by many men, and I have yet to hear the first one
speak of it otherwise than with regret. And yet, I am going
to admit a little secret feeling that perhaps it is not alto-
gether without its compensations. The balance is still in
favor of the regret but I cannot forget that a good many
years ago when Mr. Bryce came to the city of Chicago to be
the chief guest of honor at a public dinner it was my privilege
and honor to sit next to him. The subject of discussion on
which he was expected to speak was "municipal govern-
ment," and as the evening wore along and we discussed the
long menu, we talked about municipal government ourselves,
and he did most of the talking in the most interesting fashion.
It was very illuminating, and I was impressed when he said,
'T wish I could talk to these people in the way I feel free to
talk to you, but I am a diplomat, and there are some limita-
tions." Now, if his release from the restraints of diplomacy
is going to give us the same full, free, frank discussion that I
had that evening, it will not be wholly without its compensa-
tions. I hope that this will be the result, and that his interest
in us and our institutions, or if not in us alone then in those
institutions that interest not only us but the whole Anglo-
Saxon world, will continue, and that his keen observations
and wise reflections will find their way onto paper for our

6 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION

profit and our pleasure. I have the great honor to present
to you His Excellency the Ambassador from Great Britain
to the United States.

ADDRESS OF
RT. HON. JAMES BRYCE

British Ambassador to the United States

NATIONAL PARKS— THE NEED OF THE
FUTURE

I have lived long enough in the United States, and have
known the United States long enough, having come here for
the first time forty-two years ago, to feel just as much inter-
ested in all those questions that relate to your welfare, in
city and in country, as if I were one of your citizens, and I
hope you will allow me to speak to you with that freedom
which you would allow to one of your citizens. I do not
think I need to feel those limitations when discussing a sub-
ject of this kind, so far removed from politics or any other
controversial fields.

There is one thing better even than the City Beautiful,
and that is the Country Beautiful. I have had a great deal
of experience in England in dealing with these questions;
for some years I was chairman, and afterwards a member,
of a society for preserving commons and open spaces and
public rights of way, and member of another society for
securing to the public places of national and historic interest,
and in the course of such membership I have been led often
to think of what is our duty to the future, and of the benefits
which the preservation of places of natural beauty may confer
on the community. That is a problem which presents itself,
not only in Great Britain, but all over Europe, and what
Europe is now is that toward which you in America are
tending. Europe is a populous, overcrowded continent;
you will some day be a populous and ultimately perhaps
even a crowded continent, and it is well to take thought at
once, before the overcrowding comes on, as to how you
will deal with the diflaculties which we have had to deal
with in Europe, so that you may learn as much as possible
from our experience, and not find too late that the beauty

NATIONAL PARKS— NEED OF THE FUTURE 7

and solitude of nature have been snatched from you by
private individuals.

I need not descant upon that which the love of nature is
and ought to be to each and all of us. The love of nature is
the very simplest and best of those pleasures the power of
enjoying which has been implanted in us. It is the most
easily accessible of pleasures, one which can never be per-
verted, and one of which (as the old darky said about the
watermelon) you cannot have too much. It is a pleasure
which lasts from youth to age; we cannot enjoy it in the
form of strenuous exercise with the same fullness in age,
because our physical powers are not the same, but we have
perhaps a more perfect enjoyment in some other ways,
because we have the associations and memories of those who
have in bygone days visited beautiful scenes with us, and
also the associations with which poetry clothes lovely nature.
Therefore there is nothing which in the interest of pure
enjoyment we ought more to desire and study to diffuse
than the beauties of nature. Fortunately, the love of nature
is increasing among us. It is one of the tests of civilization
that people should enjoy this simple pleasure instead of those
more violent and exciting pleasures which may become
the source, in extreme forms, of evil. The love of nature,
I say, is happily increasing among us, and it therefore becomes
all the more important to find means for safeguarding nature.
The population is increasing, too, and the number of people
who desire to enjoy nature, therefore, is growing larger both
absolutely and in proportion. But, unfortunately, the
opportunities for enjoying it, except as regards easier loco-
motion, are not increasing. The world is circumscribed. The
surface of this little earth of ours is limited, and we cannot
add to it. When a man finds his house is too small, he builds
more rooms on to it, but we cannot add to our world; we
did not make it, it was made for us, and we cannot increase
its dimensions. All we can do is turn it to the best possible
account. Now, let us remember that the quantity of natural
beauty in the world, the number of spots calculated to give
enjoyment in the highest form, are limited, and are being
constantly encroached upon. There are four forms that this
encroachment takes. There is the desire of private persons
to appropriate beautiful scenery to themselves, by enclos-
ing it in private grounds around their houses and debarring
the public from access to it. We in England and Scotland
have lost some of the most beautiful scenery we possess

8 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION

because it has been taken into private estates. A great deal
of the finest scenery in Scotland is now practically unap-
proachable by the pedestrian or the artist or the naturalist
because people have appropriated it to their private pur-
poses and keep the public out. This is especially the case
where the motive for exclusion is what is called sport. Sport
is understood to mean killing God's creatures, and for the
sake of killing God's creatures, such as deer and birds, very
large areas in Britain, and some also in other parts of Europe,
are shut up.

Then the enjoyment of natural beauty is largely
encroached upon by the operations of the lumbermen. That
is something we do not have to fear in Britain, because
timber is not there in sufficient quantity to be an article of
economic value to us, but it is a very serious question here.
You have prodigious and magnificent forests; there are no
others comparable for extent and splendor with those you
possess. These forests, especially those on the Cascade
range and the Sierra Nevada, are being allowed to be cut
down ruthlessly by the lumbermen. I do not blame them;
timber is wanted and they want to drive their trade, but the
process goes on too fast and much of the charm of nature is
lost while the interests of the future are forgotten. The
same thing is happening in the Appalachian ranges in New
England and the Alleghanies southward from Pennsylvania,
a superbly beautiful country, where the forests made to be
the delight of those who wish to ramble among them and
enjoy the primitive charm of hills and woodland glades, have
been despoiled. Sometimes the trees have been cut down
and the land left bare. Sometimes an inextricable tangle of
small boughs and twigs remains, so that when a dry year
comes a fire rages among them and the land is so scorched
that for many long years no great trees will rise to replace
those that were destroyed.

And, lastly, there is the question of water power, which
has in recent years, since the scientific discoveries enabled
it to be applied in the form of electricity, become an asset of
great commercial value. You fortunately have a great sup-
ply of splendid water power. I am far from saying that a
great deal of it, perhaps most of it, may not be very properly
used for industrial purposes, but I do say that it has been
used in some places to the detriment, and even to the ruin, of
scenery. It has been used in Niagara, for instance, to such
an extent as to change completely the character of what was

NATIONAL PARKS— NEED OF THE FUTURE 9

once the most beautiful waterfall landscape in the whole
world. Those of you who did not see it, as I did, forty-two
years ago, and are not in a position to contrast it now with
what it was then, cannot know what a wretched shadow of its
former self it has become — not so much by the diminution
of the flow of the river as by the hideous erections which
line the shores. It is not too late to repair what has been done,
and I hope the day will come when the pristine flow of its
waters will be restored, and when the devastating agencies
will have been removed. That we will leave for a future
which has begun to appreciate scenery more highly than
men did thirty years ago, when the ruin of which I speak
was beginning to be wrought.

Taking all these causes together, you can see how many
encroachments there are upon the unique beauty of your
country; and I beg you to consider that, although your
country is vast and has scope of natural beauty far greater
than we can boast in little countries like England or Scot-
land, even your scenery is not inexhaustible, and, with your
great population and the growing desire to enjoy the beauties
of nature, you have not any more than you need. For-
tunately, you have made a good beginning in the work of
conservation. You have led the world in the creation of
National Parks. I have seen three or four of these. I have
been in the Yosemite twice, in the Yellowstone twice, and
in the splendid forest region which you have around that
mountain which the people of Seattle now insist on calling
Mount Rainier — no doubt the name given by Vancouver —
but which used, when I first explored its forests, to be called
by the more sonorous Indian name, Tacoma; and also in that
superb reserve on the north side of the great caiion of the
Colorado River, as well as in others of minor extent in other
parts of the country. The creation of such National Parks is
good, and it has had the admirable effect of setting other
countries to emulate your example. Australia and New
Zealand have followed that example. New Zealand, in the
district of its hot springs and geysers, has made a public
scenic area something similar to your Yellowstone, though
not on so extensive a scale; the people of New South Wales
have set off three beautiful National Parks within thirty or
forty miles of the capital city of Sydney, taking regions of
exquisite beauty and keeping them for a source of delight to
the growing population of that city. Therefore your exam-
ple is bearing great fruit. I only wish it had come sooner to

lo AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION

us in England and Scotland before we had lost so much con-
trol of our own natural beauties.

Let me add that it is not only a question of making more
parks, but also of keeping the parks in the best condition. I
heard the other day that a question has been raised as to
whether automobiles should be admitted in the Yosemite.
May I be permitted to say a word on that subject? If Adam
had known what harm the serpent was going to work, he
would have tried to prevent him from finding lodgment in
Eden; and if you were to realize what the result of the auto-
mobile will be in that wonderful, that incomparable valley,
you will keep it out. The one drawback to enjoyment of
the Yosemite Valley in the summer and autumn is the dust;
the granite rock along the roads easily becomes fine sand;
even the feet of the horses and the wheels of the vehicles
raise a very great deal of it, which interferes with enjoyment
as one drives or walks; but the conditions would be grievously
worse with the swift automobile. And, further, the automo-
bile would destroy what may be called the sentimental charm
of the landscape. It is not merely that the dust woutd be
there, but the whole feeling of the spontaneity and freshness
of primitive nature would be marred by this modern inven-
tion, with its din and w^hir and odious smell. Remember,
moreover, that one cannot really enjoy fine scenery when one
is traveling at a rate of fifteen or twenty to thirty miles an
hour. If you want to enjoy the beauty of such landscapes
as the Yosemite presents, you want to see them slowly. You
see scenery best of all in walking, when you can stop at any
moment and enjoy any special point of view, and you can see
it pretty well in riding or driving because in moving at a
pace of four or five or six miles an hour you are not going
too fast to take in the delicate details of the landscape. But
traveling faster than that — and my experience is that chauf-
feurs so delight in speed that it is hard to get them to slacken
even when you bid them — you cannot enjoy the beauty. It
was often my duty in the British Parhament to oppose bills
conferring powers to build railways through some of the
beautiful lake and valley scenery w^e have in Britain. The
advocates of the bills urged that passengers could enjoy the
landscape from the windows of the car. But we pointed out
that you cannot really enjoy a romantic landscape from a
railway window where the beauties are delicate and the
scale small. It is different where scenery is on a vast scale,
so that the railway is insignificant in comparison, and the

NATIONAL PARKS— NEED OF THE FUTURE ii

objects, rocks or mountains, are huge. One may get the big
views from a train, though they are better seen in walking
or driving, but you cannot enjoy the small beauties. The
focus is always changing in your eye, and it is impossible to
have that kind of enjoyment which a pedestrian, or a painter,
or any lover of natiure has if you are hurrying past at a swift
automobile pace. At present the steam-cars stop some
twelve miles away from the entrance of the Yosemite Park,
and the drive up to it gives you far more pleasure than a
journey by rail or automobile possibly could. There are
plenty of roads for the lovers of speed and noise without
intruding on these few places where the wood nymphs and
the water nymphs ought to be allowed to have the landscape
to themselves.

Let me pay a personal tribute to the taste and judgment
with which, as it seemed to me three years ago, the hotels in
the Yosemite were being managed. There were no offensive
signs, no advertisements of medicines, no other external
disfigurements to excite horror, and the inns were all of
moderate size and not more than two stories high. I earnestly
hope that the administration will always be continued on these
lines, with this same regard for landscape beauty.

Now, a word about additional parks. Although you have
done splendidly in creating these I have mentioned and some
others, there are still other places where National Parks are
wanted. There is a splendid region in the Alleghanies, a
region of beautiful forests where the tulip trees grow to one
hundred and fifty, two hundred feet, or more, a mountain
land on the borders of North Carolina and East Tennessee,
where there are romantic river valleys and hills clothed with
luxmriant woods, primitive forests standing as they stood
before the white man drove the Indians away, filled with
flowers and traversed by sparkling streams, containing
everything to deHght the heart of the lover of nature. It
would be a fine thing to have a tract of three or four hundred
thousand acres set apart here for the pleasure of the people
of the South and Middle Atlantic States, for whom it is a
far cry to the Rockies. Then you might have some additional
parks in Colorado also. As regards the Northeast Atlantic
States, what seems to be most wanted is to preserve the
forests of the White and Green Mountains. Perhaps it is
not necessary to create in that coimtry a National Park in
the same sense as that which might be thought requisite in
the Alleghanies, because the mountains are so high and rocky.

12 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION

and so little ground is suitable for cultivation in the valleys
that it is not likely they will be taken up, and probably
hardly necessary that the Government should step in to
save them. But I believe that in some parts of the White
Mountains, for instance, it would be an excellent thing to
create large forest reserves, where the trees should be under
protection of the National or State Government, cut by them
as required, and the forests replanted as they are cut. In
this way you would keep a place where the beauty of the
forests would remain for all generations, and where the forests
would be so cared for that the present danger of forest fires
would be averted.

There is one question that comes very near to you in
Baltimore, and also in Washington, on which I would like
to speak a word. You know there is a great deal of charm-
ing forest country between Baltimore and Washington. A
good deal of it is forest of the second growth, some bits of it
are of the first growth; but even that of the second contains
a great number of beautiful, fine-grown trees. The land is
of no considerable value at present, and I believe it could be
purchased at a very low price. I have heard it suggested
that thirty-six dollars an acre would be an average price for
the land, of which there is a great quantity remaining. Hav-
ing frequently taken walking excursions from Washington
into the country from ten to fifteen or twenty miles around,
I have been struck with the beauty and profusion of the
wild flowers in that district. The flora of that region being a
blend of the flora of the North Atlantic States with some of
the plants and flowers which belong to the South Atlantic,
is of great interest to the scientific botanist. Baltimore,
Philadelphia, and Washington are all swiftly growing cities.
What could be done better for the inhabitants of these three
cities than to secure for their enjoyment a large part of this
forest land and set it apart, forever free from private purposes
or use of agriculture, and keep it as a forest reserve to be
managed scientifically, so that it should pay for the expense
of working it by the timber which could be cut and sold on
well-planned scientific lines, and to afford a place where
people could go and wander about at their own sweet will,
just as the old settlers did when they first came here? Here
the automobile would do no harm on the main roads, because
there would be plenty of byways and forest footpaths. If
the automobilist wants to be whirled along the roads, let
him have his way, but keep wide sylvan spaces where those

NATIONAL PARKS— NEED OF THE FUTURE 13

who seek quiet and the sense of communing with nature can
go out in the early morning from the city and spend a whole
day enjoying one spot after another where nature has provided
her simple joys, mingled shade and sunUght, the rusthng of
the leaves, and the songs of birds. Such things in life the
man of the cities can have, and when nature has provided
it in such bountiful measure would it not be a shame to lose
the benefits she offers?

I am sensible that I may be perhaps accused of treating
this subject in a somewhat sentimental way. Well, I confess,
I am not addressing my arguments to those who think that
man lives by bread alone, or who think there are no values
except those measured by dollars and cents. It is because
I believe the members of this Association are not of that
mind that I venture to address these considerations to you.

And let me try to give some logical quality to my state-
ments by submitting some few propositions in order.

The world seems likely to last a long, long time, and we
ought to make provision for the future.

The population of the world goes on constantly increasing
and nowhere increasing so fast as in North America.

A taste for natural beauty is increasing, and, as we hope,
will go on increasing.

The places of scenic beauty do not increase, but, on the
contrary, are in danger of being reduced in number and
diminished in quantity, and the danger is always increasing
with the accumulation of wealth, owing to the desire of
private persons to appropriate these places. There is no
better service we can render to the masses of the people than
to set about and preserve for them wide spaces of fine scenery
for their delight.

From these propositions I draw the conclusion that it is
necessary to save what we have got, and to extend the policy
which you have wisely adopted, by acquiring and preserving
still further areas for the perpetual enjoyment of the people.

Let us think of the future. We are trustees of the future.
We are not here for ourselves alone. All these gifts were
not given to us to be used by one generation, or with the
thought of one generation only before our minds. We are
the heirs of those who have gone before, and charged with
the duty we owe to those who come after, and there is no
duty which seems clearer than that of handing on to them
undiminished facilities for the enjoyment of some of the
best gifts that the Creator has bestowed upon his children.

14 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION

ADDITIONAL REMARKS BY
SECRETARY FISHER

Subsequent to Mr. Bryce, Secretary Fisher spoke further, as follows:

I suppose my friends, the automobilistS; would regard me
as lacking in judicial quality if I did not state that most of
those who apply for admission of automobiles to the Yosem-
ite, and perhaps to the parks generally, are prepared to
concede that they should be used merely for access to the
hotels or stopping-places, and not for conveyance in and
about the park. That of course is not universally true, because
some of them do insist that they should be allowed to run
their automobiles wherever they wish to go. But I wish that
His Excellency had the opportunity — perhaps he may find
it — to peruse the voluminous correspondence from the very
insistent automobilists of the United States, with most
enthusiastic statistics as to their numbers and growth and
influence, and the very great detriment that the difficulty
of access to the parks under the present system causes. The
question is one which is not without its difficulties.

It will also perhaps interest the Ambassador and you to
learn that some practical steps have been already taken,
particularly with regard to the creation of parks at some of
the points to which he refers. The Chief Geographer of the
Geological Survey spent a large part of his summer in Colo-
rado, examining the region known as Estes Park, which I
have no doubt the Ambassador knows well and appreciates.
The question there, as elsewhere, presents serious difficulty,
largely due to the fact that much of the territory which
should be included in the park if it is to be made a National
Park, has already passed into private hands, and the nation
is confronted with the alternative of either creating the park
wdth these private holdings inside, or spending very large
sums in their acquisition.

In the East the policy to which he refers has already been
put into some practice. One of the duties of the Secretary
of the Interior is to sit as a member of the National Forest
Reservation Commission, which is charged with the duty of
spending the money which Congress has appropriated for
the purchase of lands that are regarded as appropriate to
be reforested and controlled for the improvement or pro-
tection of navigable streams. You know that question has

NATIONAL PARKS— NEED OF THE FUTURE 15

been subject to earnest dispute among scientific men. The
engineers have differed radically as to the actual effect of
forest-cover upon stream-flow, and there has been much said
on both sides, so that the Geological Survey has until recently
felt that the scientific basis for the affirmative side was not so
convincing as it should be. They have now conducted an
elaborate series of observations, and declare themselves pre-
pared to meet all comers and to demonstrate that forest-
cover does have beneficial effect upon stream-flow. So we
have practically completed the purchase of considerable
areas, in the White Mountains, and in the lower Alleghany
Range, running from the Smokies and the region to which
Mr. Bryce has referred, up to New Hampshire. These areas
wiU simply be held under the Forest Service and will not be
National Parks in the ordinary sense. So we are making a
little progress.

There is one phase of the National Park System work to
which I briefly referred in my opening remarks, and that is
the attempt to bring the parks before the public and to let
the pubUc understand what there is in them and why it will
be to their interest and pleasure to see them. To this end
there has been maintained a very informal publicity bureau,
by Mr. Schmeckebier, who is in charge of publications in
the Interior Department, and who will now show you some
of his pictures and tell you something about a few of the
National Parks.

ARE NATIONAL PARKS
WORTH WHILE?

The one evening session of the Seventh Annual Con-
vention of the American Civic Association, held at Washing-
ton, D. C, December 13, 14 and 15, igii^was devoted wholly
to the national parks of the United States, with especial
reference to the necessity of creating by Congress a Federal
Bureau of Parks, within the Department of the Interior, to
make possible their more adequate administration.

Hon. Walter L. Fisher, Secretary of the Interior, presided,
and introduced the several distinguished speakers of the
evening, all of whom were staunch advocates of a more com-
prehensive development of the great National Parks. The
most distinguished speaker was the President of the United
States, who had in his recent annual message to Congress
(and later in a special message) strongly recommended the
creation of a Bureau of National Parks.

PRESIDENT TAFT'S ADDRESS

Ladies and Gentlemen:

It costs a good deal of money to run a government, and
the first ambition of any one responsible for a government
is economy — at least it ought to be. Therefore, the propo-
sition to add a bureau or a department sends gooseflesh all
over the body of anyone who has any sort of responsibihty
in respect to the finances of the government, for it means
another nucleus for the increase of governmental expenses.
Yet a modern government, in order to be what it ought to
be, must spend money. Utihty involves expense.

Now, we have in the United States a great many natural
wonders, and in that lazy way we have in our Government of
first taking up one thing and then another, we have set aside
a number of National Parks, of forest reservations, covering
what ought to be National Parks, and what are called
"national monuments." We have said to ourselves, "Those
cannot get away. We have surrounded them by a law which
makes them necessarily Government property forever,'^and

(16)

I

ARE NATIONAL PARKS WORTH WHILE? 17

we will wait in our own good time to make them useful as
parks to the people of the country. Since the Interior De-
partment is the 'lumber room' of the Government, into
which we put everything that we don't know how to classify,
and don't know what to do with, we will just put them under
the Secretary of the Interior." That is the condition of the
National Parks today.

Those of you who have first been in the Yellowstone Park
and admired its beauties, and thought of the ability of the
army engineers to construct such roads as there are there,
and then have gone on to the Yosemite and have seen its
beauties, and found the roads not quite so good, and then have
gone to the Grand Canyon, and found a place where you could
bury the Yellowstone Canyon and the Yosemite, and never
know that they were there, and found no roads at all, except
a railroad that was built at a great expense, and probably at
great loss, to the side of the Canyon, and only a trail called
the "Bright Angel Trail," down into the Canyon — down
which they would not let me go because they were afraid the
mules could not carry me — you will understand that some-
thing needs to be done in respect to those parks if we all are
to enjoy them.

I am in favor of equality of opportunity, and I resent an
exclusion from the enjoyment of the wonders of the world
that it only needs a little money to remove!

Now the course that was taken in respect to the Yellow-
stone Park ought to be taken in respect to all of our parks.
If we are going to have National Parks, we ought to make
them available to the people, and we ought to build the roads,
expensive as they may be, in order that those parks may
become what they are intended to be when Congress creates
them. And we cannot do that, we cannot carry them on
effectively, unless we have a bureau which is itself distinctly
charged with the responsibility for their management and
for their building up.

When the Secretary of the Interior, therefore, asked me
to come here, and told me the subject of the meeting tonight,
I was glad to come. It is going to add to the expense of the
Interior Department, and it is going to swell those estimates,
but it is essential that we should use what the Lord has given
us in this way, and make it available for all the people. We
have the money. It is not going to take enough to exhaust the
Treasury. It is a proper expense, a necessary expense. Let
us have the bureau.

i8 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION

Secretary Fisher, in following the President, explained in
detail "The Need for a Bureau of National Parks," pointing
out the limitations of the existing provisions for their admin-
istration and emphasizing the larger and more dignified
administration that would be possible with a regularly
constituted bureau.

ADDRESS OF
HON. WALTER L. FISHER

Secretary of the Interior
At Washington, December 13, 1911

During the past summer, or early fall — I have forgotten
for the moment the exact date — there was held at the Yellow-
stone Park the first conference that had ever been held of
the people who were interested in a practical way in the
administration of the National Parks and in the various in-
terests that lead up to and are connected with them, such as
the railroads and the concessionaires for the hotel privileges,
transportation privileges, photographic concessions, and
matters of that sort within the parks. I have not seen the
tabulation of the roster of that conference, but my recollection
of it is that there were in attendance something in excess of
one hundred. This conference was the result of an effort
which had gone on for some considerable time on the part of
the chief clerk of the Department of the Interior, Mr. Ucker,
and Mr. Carr, who is the next in command in that line of
administration, and the other people connected with the
administration of the parks in the oflice of the Secretary.
They were joined in this, however, and had been in the pre-
liminary arrangements and discussions, as I understand it,
by the representatives of this organization, the American
Civic Association, and others who were interested in the gen-
eral subject of the improvement of our National Parks. The
conference that was held was a very practical one. There
were a great number of developments considered by those
who had been asked to prepare suggestions upon particular
phases of park management and control and other matters
connected with the National Parks, and they were followed
by general discussions from the floor, and, of course, much
discussion and much talk quietly during the various recesses
and in the evening.

ARE NATIONAL PARKS WORTH WHILE? 19

The American Civic Association, very naturally and
properly, was represented at that meeting by its long-time
president, who is so well known to you and to the country
at large for his work in this direction. The discussions that
went on, of course, related mainly to the question of what we
could do to improve our National Parks to make them more
accessible to the public, and more attractive to the public.
I do not know whether I shall in any way intrude upon the
field which is to be covered by Mr. McFarland in his address,
or by Senator Smoot, but I think it is proper I should call to
your attention, for fear that they may not speak of, or be
able to include in their remarks, some of the things that we
often pass by, but which may be interesting and instructive
to you, and I think are to be considered.

In the first place, the National Parks, like Topsy, have
"just growed;" at least that is the impression which has been
produced upon my mind from such investigation and dis-
cussion as I have given to them. There is no consistent
theory of legislation with regard to the National Parks. While
some of them follow the general lines of previous statutes,
there are wide variations in the statutory authority under
which the parks are carried on today. The whole park work
of some states is wholly different from that of others, and
the situation in detail is almost radically divergent. For
instance, I find some such question as this: Whether the
revenues derived from a particular National Park shall be
available for the use of that park, its improvement and de-
velopment. We have no consistent action. Two of our
important parks are without statutory authority to that
effect, so that such revenue as is derived from the park
itself in any way has to go back into the general fund of
the Nation, to be used in such a way as that derived from any
other general source is used, and appropriated directly and
specifically for that purpose. In other parks a very large per
cent of the money available is directly available without
appropriation. The same thing is true with regard to appro-
priations which Congress gives to the parks. The importance
and the political pressure which a particular park possesses
bring to it appropriations larger than those which may be
given to another. The result is that we have no consistent
theory of park administration.

There are many questions which any one could see at a
glance are similar in all these parks. Take, for instance, the
question of road-making. We have practically the same prob-

20 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION

lems in all of the parks with regard to road-making; at least
in a very considerable number of them. For instance, there
may be three or four parks where these problems are so
sinular that the general specifications, the general principles
that should be apphed, are identical, but they may differ
from another class of these parks.

Take many of the other questions that are raised in the
parks. The whole question of the protection and disposition
of the trees, the concessions, how the hotel concessions shall
be managed, what requirements shall be made of the hotel
proprietors, what regulations shall be made with regard to
the casual ordinary visitor for his protection and so that he
may receive the proper sort of service. These are very similar
in all these parks, or, at all events, it is quite apparent that
an examination into any given question in one of the parks
would throw a great deal of light upon the same problem when
it arises in others of the parks.

I mention these things, simple as they may seem, to call
your attention to the singular fact that, although there has
been a great deal of talk of improved efficiency in our Govern-
ment affairs, we have absolutely no machinery and no legal
authority to use any machinery for the coordination of these
parks so we may state this problem as a whole. The only
thing we can possibly do in the way of coordination in the
Interior Department is to see that questions that come to
us for determination are referred to the same individuals in
the Department. We can see that the chief clerk, or his
assistant, shall primarily pass upon these matters; we may
say that the assistant secretary — as distinguished from the
first assistant, there being two — shall be the person to whom
appeals shall go, the person to whom the chief clerk shall go
for final determination of questions of importance; and we
do. When we have done that we are through. We may use
our Division of Mails and Files. We may use our Division
of Publications and get a certain amount of effective work
there; and we have Mr. Schmeckebier of that Division, who
has accomplished some quite remarkable results, in my
judgment, in the publicity line simply in getting out some
material to those who are eager to have it. We have found
that the American public is greedy for real news about the
national parks; that it is genuinely interested in the National
Parks and ready to get anything that is not simply per-
fimctory news upon this subject. But when we have done
these things the Department of the Interior is through. That

ARE NATIONAL PARKS WORTH WHILE? 21

is all that it can do toward coordination. It would seem
that it requires practically no argument to convince that the
one thing we need at once for the efficiency of administration
and economy in expenditure is to get these parks together
under some division or bureau where they can receive the
benefit of a central staff, where we can take the men who are
now studying road-making, or the management of roads, or
the sprinkUng problem — which is, after all, to the traveling
public probably the most important question connected with
the administration of the parks, because the hotels will do a
certain amount of looking after their own interests along the
lines of intelligent and enlightened selfishness. And the
revenue is there. But if the roads are to be sprinkled and
taken care of, that must be done purely as a matter of ex-
penditure, and unless it is looked after by the administrative
force it will not be looked after at all.

Now it is perfectly apparent what we ought to have. We
ought to have some sort of a central organization, something
in the nature of a bureau, with a head and subordinates, so
we can get proper expert talent and men who will devote
their time to these matters, not merely with regard to one
park but all the parks where the questions arise. It is per-
fectly apparent that if we were studying any one of these
questions with regard to any one of these parks, and were
confined to that and the appropriation for that park, we
could not get as good a man to study the problems in the
case of the others. And, in the second place, after we have
done it once, unless we can utilize his advice and experience
in some place else we won't get it at all. Then, another thing.
We get rid of a good many of these isolated and separate
and distinct appropriations. We would not have several
appropriations made distinctly for the Yellowstone Park
and made for the Yosemite Park and so on down the line,
and each appropriation confined to that particular park or
some particular function or interest in that park, but we
would begin to learn that many of these problems are alike,
that it is not enough to treat one park in one way and another
in another way. We would have our Bureau bring forward
the things in our parks which now do not receive particular
attention, very largely through ignorance of the subject
because the experience of the particular man who has that
park in charge has not been so great as has been that of
some other man.

The result of all these reflections was that the conference

22 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION

to which I have referred was, so far as we were able to ascer-
tain, unanimous upon the proposition that there should be
established as promptly as possible a Bureau of National
Parks, under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, so
that that Bureau might coordinate these parks and their
administration and vastly improve their condition and their
advantage to the pubUc. In tin's conference, this was not
merely the expression of foresters, of those interested in the
parks from the theoretical point of view, but the conviction
of men who attended there representing the large railroad
systems which lead up to those parks and which are directly
interested in them. And it was a very significant thing to
me, as I think it will be to you, to find that the Northern
Pacific Railroad Company, whose road leads to one of our
principal parks, was, and is, much in favor, through its rep-
resentatives, of having a National Park Bureau established,
embracing other parks as well, purely from a scenic point of
view. In other words, each particular railroad, which led to
a particular park, was not interested solely in working for
that park, but these men have reached that degree of en-
lightenment in their selfishness — ^in their self-interest — that
they have come to the conclusion that it was for their own
best interest to have a National Park Bureau established.

I have talked this matter over with the President, and
I know that he is favorably interested in it, and that he gladly
accepted the suggestion that he come over here this evening
to meet this audience and express his own views in favor of
this movement in which the American Civic Association is
taking so prominent and leading a part. But you do not
expect me to fill the stage this evening to the exclusion of
those who have been regularly selected as speakers, and
particularly not to take the place of, or infringe upon the
time allowed to, Mr. McFarland, President of the American
Civic Association. Recognizing, as I do, the practical and
vigorous manner in which he has gone into this, as he has
into most of the other problems in which the American
Civic Association is interested, I feel that we have gained an
ally — I should not put it that way — that we are allies with
him, and that we are willing to help him and this Association
in canying on this work and see that we get from this coming
Congress, if possible, a bill along the lines of that which
Senator Smoot has advocated, which will permit of the estab-
lishment of a bureau of the sort I have described.

I take pleasure in presenting Mr. McFarland. [Applause.]

ARE NATIONAL PARKS WORTH WHILE? 23

ADDRESS OF
MR. J. HORACE McFARLAND

President American Civic Association
At Washington, December 13, 1911

"ARE NATIONAL PARKS WORTH WHILE?"

There can be only a negative reply to the query of the
subject, unless it be conclusively shown that the National
Parks add definitely something of value to the life or the
resources of the Nation. Mere pride of possession cannot
justify, in democratic America, the removal from develop-
ment of upward of five millions of acres of the public
domain.

THE AMERICAN PARK IDEA

To establish true value, real worth-whileness, therefore,
it is necessary to put the National Parks on trial. Indeed, as
the National Parks are but a larger development of municipal,
county and state parks, we may quite properly put on the
stand the whole American park idea.

It is necessary to call the recent rapid development of a
certain kind of parks in the United States an American idea,
for it has no close parallel abroad. Examining, for instance,
the admirable plan upon which the capital of Belgium has
been developing since 1572, we note in Brussels an almost
entire absence of such parks as those of Boston. The present-
day plan of Paris shows that inside the old city there had
been provided almost as large an area of cemeteries in which
to store the dead as of parks in which to restore the energies
of the living. Great London has barely an acre of parks for
each thousand of her people — only a tenth of the ideal
American provision of an acre for every hundred inhabitants.
Even model Berlin is long on municipal forests and short on
well-distributed municipal parks. The recently published
Encyclopedia Britannica, written abroad, devotes just
31 lines to the discussion of the word "park," and 17 of these
lines refer to its military significance !

So the American service park is a New World idea, and
it is even quite new in the New World; for, at the date of the
Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, parks in the United
States were few in number, small in extent, and largely upon
European models. Within five years, indeed, a contest has

24 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION

raged in Greater New York around the idea of diverting a
portion of Central Park from the service of the relatively
few in the way of purely pleasure development to the service
of the very many through the establishment of well-equipped
playgrounds.

Yet inquiry has developed that, in 1909, 74 American
cities owned 41,576 acres of parks, an average of about four-
tenths of an acre to the 100 of their population, and spent
upon them that year for maintenance — that is, to make them
of service to the people — an average of $91.42 per acre.
Some of these cities are in what I call the honor class of
American communities, in that they own and maintain an
acre or more of parks for each hundred of their people.
Such cities are Council Bluffs, Minneapolis, Harrisburg,
Colorado Springs and Springfield, 111.

PLAYGROUNDS— THE FIRST AIDS TO
CHILDHOOD

This American service park idea, into which we are in-
quiring critically as to its true value, its relative efficiency,
has its intensive development in modern playgrounds — those
first aids to endangered American childhood, of which few
examples are found abroad, and not nearly enough in our
own county. We have multiplied schools in which to culti-
vate the brain, but have delayed long in providing adequate
facilities to develop and keep in order the body which houses
the brain. Our cemeteries, our juvenile courts and our
reform schools have increased much more rapidly than the
means by which the city can hold back the population of the
one and decrease the business of the others.

Chicago, for instance, has notably discovered the truth
as to this relation between crime and disorder and the small
park and social center. It is a departing relation; for in 1909
it was discovered that within a half-mile radius of her twelve
splendidly equipped and maintained breathing-spots, veri-
table life-saving stations in the midst of the sea of industrial
strain and stress, juvenile delinquency had decreased 44 per
cent, while in the same year it had increased 1 1 per cent in
the city as a whole.

Here, then, is the first evidence for the defendant at the
bar — the American park idea. The service park, the ordered
and supervised playground, act immediately and favorably
on the health and the orderliness of the community, and

ARE NATIONAL PARKS WORTH WHILE? 25

consequently increase materially the average of individual
efficiency. In other words, they pay dividends in humanity.

AMERICAN PARK SYSTEMS

The park idea we are examining has a development in
another way. The joining of separated parks by a highway
of green, usually called a parkway, is the step taken when a
community develops from the simple having of parks to the
proud possession of a park system. The one may merely
have happened; the other is always the result of a careful
plan. Minneapolis, Hartford, Kansas City, Boston, Buffalo
and other prosperous and advanced American cities have
such systems. Chicago has a great plan for a park system,
and owns some links in the chain which is to bind it together.

An adequate park system, looking toward the future of
the city, and giving to every inhabitant easy access without
expense for transportation to the relief of a spot of green, to
the recreation of a playground, is the most profitable invest-
ment a city can make. It is profitable in promoting the wel-
fare of the people; it is profitable in providing along its borders
increased taxable values. For instance, Kansas City's Paseo,
cut through her length, has cleared fully its cost in increased
values, and even old Central Park in New York has returned
to the city more than eight times the total amount spent in
purchase and development within sixty years.

I bring then before the court the second witness for the
character and worth-whileness of the American park idea.
Well-considered park improvements always react favorably
upon community values. Proper park investments are usually
placed at what amounts to compound increment.

WHAT FOSTERS TRUE PATRIOTISM?

But there is another witness for the defendant. It is
typified in the American flag, the emblem of our national
existence, the concrete, visible essence of that love of country
which manifests itself in the essential virtue of patriotism.
Consider what it is that inspires us as we sing the national
hymn. Is it our wonder of mining, showing in the hideous
ore dumps, the sordid mining village? Is it in the burned-
over waste that has followed the cutting of much of our forest
wealth? Is it the powerhouse in which is harnessed the beauty
of Niagara? Is it the smoking factory chimneys, the houses

26 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION

of the grimy mill town, the malodorous wharves along our
navigable rivers? Is it even the lofty metropolitan sky-
scraper, or the great transcontinental steel highway?

No; not one of these produces patriotism. Listen to
the most sordid materialist who is American in birth or resi-
dence, as he boasts: it is always of the beauty of his town,
his state, his country! Our devotion to the flag begins in that
love of country which its beauty has begotten; it may end,
at the last supreme test, in the beauty of soul that makes
the patriot ready to die for his country in battle — if just
battle there may ever again be.

Now these parks that have been presented to you, and
those I am yet to present, are, all of them, planned to show
forth the beauty of the land. Never a service park have I
seen or heard of that failed to use to the utmost the trees
and the plants, the grass and the flow^ers that stand for our
native land. Playgrounds are sometimes, perforce, on limited
city spaces, but always there is at least the attempt to get
the blue of the sky opened to the boys and girls. Into the
brick and concrete heart of the city the park brings a little
of the primeval outdoors, and here grows best the love of
country which sees with adoration the waving stars and
stripes.

So I hold that, in safeguarding and stimulating the essen-
tial virtue of patriotism, the beauty of the American park
stands forth as most of all worth while. I urge that, as an
antidote to the teachings of social disorder, as a counter-
irritant to the saloon, as a relentless foe to the slum, the
American park idea in the playground is most completely
justified.

THE NATION'S LARGER PLAYGROUNDS

It is but a step across the coimtry and the state park to
the National Park. There come, increasingly in these work-
filled American days, times when the tired spirit seeks a
wider space for change and rest than any city, or indeed, any
state, can provide. The deep forests of the Sierras call, the
snow-capped peaks of the Rockies beckon. The roar of
Niagara can drown the buzz of the ticker. Old Faithful's
gleaming column of silver spray shuts off the balance-sheet.
El Capitan makes puny the capitol of any state, or of the
nation. The camp under the oaks of the Hetch-Hetchy
Valley, near the ripple of the Tuolumne, restores vigor, up-

ARE NATIONAL PARKS WORTH WHILE? 27

lifts the wearied spirit. What cathedral of man's building
shows forth the power of God unto health of soul as does the
Grand Canyon of the Colorado? The glacier wonderland
of the Northwest gives us lessons on the building of the
continent, and the giant sequoias of the Pacific Slope teach
us of our own littleness.

These National Parks, then, are our larger playgrounds.
Everything that the limited scope of the city park can do
as quick aid to the citizen, they are ready to do more thor-
oughly, on a greater scale.

To the vast open spaces, the sight of great mountains, the
opportunity to live a mile or more higher up, they add pos-
sibiUties of real life in the open just touched upon as yet,
even though more than three thousand horses this year
drew their owners on camping trips into the Yellowstone
alone.

The national playgrounds, too, can, if they are held in-
violable, preserve for us, as no minor possessions can, our
unique scenic wonders, our great natural mysteries. The
spouting geyser basins and marvelous hot springs of the
Yellowstone, the atmospheric splendors of the Grand Canyon
of the Colorado, the silver threads of the Falls of the Yosem-
ite, the ancient homes of the cliff-dwellers on the Mesa
Verde, the ice marvels of the Montana glaciers, the blue
marvel of Crater Lake, the towering temples amid the big
trees of the Sierras — how long would they last unharmed and
free to all the people if the hand of the Federal Government
was withdrawn from them? Ask harassed, harnessed Niagara
— depending right now for its scenic life upon the will of this
Congress — after, indeed. Congress alone has saved it until
now from state neglect !

THE DIFFERING FUNCTIONS OF FORESTS
AND PARKS

The nation now has, it should be said, vast and admirably
handled national forests, potential with profit for all the
people. But there must be no confusion between the differ-
ing functions of the forests and the parks.

The primary function of the national forests is to supply
lumber. The primary function of the national parks is to
maintain in healthful efficiency the lives of the people who
must use that lumber. The forests are the nation's reserve
wood-lots. The parks are the nation's reserve for the main-

28 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION

tenance of individual patriotism and federal solidarity. The
true ideal of their maintenance does not run parallel to the
making of the most timber, or the most pasturage, or the
most water-power.

Our National Parks are young. They are yet undeveloped
to any considerable extent. But one of them, the Yellow-
stone, is comfortably accessible. Their value to the nation
is potential, more than instant, simply because they are not,
as a whole, yet known to our people. The nearest east of
them is fifteen hundred miles west of the country's center
of population in Indiana. Our people yet cross three thou-
sand miles of salt water to see less impressive scenery, less
striking wonders, less inspiring majesty in canyon, waterfall
and geyser, than they have not seen at home, because the
way to Europe has been made broad, comfortable and
''fashionable!"

THE NATIONAL PARKS BUT LITTLE USED

In 1 910, barely two hundred thousand visitors to our
thirteen National Parks and our twenty-eight national
monuments were reported, but all the east-bound Atlantic
greyhounds were crowded to their capacity. We have not yet
begun to use the National Parks; we have not commenced to
attract to them a share of the golden travel tide which is said
to have taken from America to Europe $350,000,000 in 19 10.

Indeed, we are not ready for visitors in our National Parks.
We have, as yet, no National Park System. The parks have
just happened; they are not the result of such an overlooking
of the national domain as would, and ought to, result in a
coordinated system. There is no adequately organized
control of the National Parks. With 41 National Parks and
moniunents, aggregating an area larger than two sovereign
states, and containing priceless glories of scenery and wonders
of nature, we do not have as efficient a provision for admin-
istration as is possessed by many a city of but fifty thousand
inhabitants for its hundred or so acres! In a lamentable num-
ber of cases, the administration consists solely in the posting
of a few warning notices I

LACK OF PARK MANAGEMENT

Nowhere in official Washington can an inquirer find an
office of the National Parks, or a desk devoted solely to their

I

ARE NATIONAL PARKS WORTH WHILE? 29

management. By passing aromid through three departments,
and consulting clerks who have taken on the extra work of
doing what they can for the nation's playgrounds, it is pos-
sible to come at a little information.

This is no one's fault. Uncle Sam has simply not waked
up about his precious parks. He has not thrown over them
the mantle of any complete legal protection — only the Yel-
lowstone has any adequate legal status, and the Yosemite is
technically a forest reserve. Selfish and greedy assaults
have been made upon the parks, and it is under a legal
"joker" that San Francisco is now seeking to take to herself
without having in ten years shown any adequate engineering
reason for the assault, nearly half of the Yosemite. Three
years ago several of us combined to scotch and kill four
vicious legislative snakes under which any one might have
condemned at $2.50 per acre the Great Falls of the Yellow-
stone, or even entered upon a national cemetery for the
production of electric power at the same price for the land !

Now there is light and a determination to do as well for
the nation as any little city does for itself. The Great Father
of the nation, who honors us tonight by his presence, has
been the unswerving friend of the nation's scenic possessions.
He has consistently stood for the people's interest in Niagara;
he now stands for their interest in the nation's parks.

His Secretary of the Interior, the presiding officer of the
evening, has appUed his great constructive ability to the
national park problem. It was at his invitation that the first
National Park Conference was held in September last. He
has visited most of the parks, and, coming from a city where
intensive park development has proceeded to be a greater
beneficence than in any other in the world, he comprehends
fully the American service park idea.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONAL PARKS

There is, then, hope for the parks. The Congress will not
refuse, I am sure, to enact legislation creating a Bureau of
National Parks, to the custody of which all the nation's
pearls of great price shall be entrusted. Under such a
Dureau, aided by a commission of national prominence and
scope, I predict that there will be undertaken not only such
ordering of the parks as will vastly increase their use and their
usefulness, but such a survey of the land as will result in the
establishment of many new National Parks, before it is too late.

30 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION

Niagara, never more in danger than at this moment,
must eventually, if it is to be a cataract and not a catastrophe,
come under the federal mantle as a national reservation, as
President Taft has again recently urged. In no other way
can America be saved from the lasting disgrace that now
threatens our most notable natural wonder. A nation that
can afford a Panama Canal cannot afford a dry Niagara!

There is something inspiring in the thought of a National
Park sacred to the memory of the great liberator, and adding
to the beauty and dignity of the city in which he poured out
his last full measure of devotion. A Lincoln Memorial
National Park, joining the lovely forests between Washington
and Baltimore and AnnapoUs to the Potomac, would be a
thousand times more fitting tribute to the glory of our first
martyr than a mere commercial highway.

He whose genius made the nation, and whose wisdom
planned this Federal City to be a fitting capital for a hundred
milHons of free people when yet there were but a scant three
millions clinging to the Atlantic seaboard, ought also to be
thus memorialized. Why shall not Mount Vernon and its
environs come into a great Washington Memorial National
Park which shall link together anew, as it reaches the
Potomac, the fame of our two greatest presidents, and for-
ever blot out a line once fought over in civil warfare?

Nothing is more certain than that eventually the nation
will come to own memorial areas, which shall serve a double
purpose in their tributes to the departed great and their
beneficence to the living. Delay means but enhanced and
compounded cost. With such a truly patriotic provision for
the future as well as the present as would be involved in the
creation of a great National Park System, available to the
people of the East as well as to those of the West, our federal
scenic possessions would come to attract the travel of the
world. Inadequate though they are now, inaccessible as
they are now, unadministered as they are now, our National
Parks have added very definitely to the resources of our people,
and are well worth while. When they shall have been given
the attention that is in the minds of our President and our
Secretary of the Interior, they will increase in efficiency, in
beauty, in extent, and in benefits open to all the people, so
that they will even more be entirely worth while.

For a Bureau of
National Parks

SPECIAL MESSAGE OF PRESIDENT TAFT TO
CONGRESS, FEBRUARY 2, 1912

**I earnestly recommend the establish-
ment of a Bureau of National Parks. Such
legislation is essential to the proper manage-
ment of those wondrous manifestations of
nature, so startling and so beautiful that
everyone recognizes the obligations of the
Government to preserve them for the edifica-
tion and recreation of the people.

**The Yellowstone Park, the Yosemite,
the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, the Glacier
National Park and the Mount Rainier National
Park and others furnish appropriate in-
stances. In only one case have we made
anything like adequate preparation for the
use of a park by the public. That case is
the Yellowstone National Park. Every con-
sideration of patriotism and the love of na-
ture and of beauty and of art requires us to
expend money enough to bring all these
natural wonders within easy reach of our
people. The first step in that direction is
the establishment of a responsible bureau,
which shall take upon itself the burden of
supervising the parks and of making recom-
mendations as to the best method of improv-
ing their accessibility and usefulness. ''

American Civic Association

President
J. HORACE McFARLAND, Harrisburg, Pa.

First Vice-President
JOHN NOLEN, Cambridge. Mass.

Treasurer
WILLIAM B. ROWLAND, New York.

Secretary
RICHARD B. WATROUS, Washington, D. C.

Vice-Presidents
CLINTON ROGERS WOODRUFF, Philadelphia.
GEORGE B. DEALEY, Dallas, Texas.
MRS. EDWARD W. BIDDLE, Carlisle, Pa.
GEORGE W. MARSTON, San Diego, CaL
J. LOCKIE WILSON, Toronto, Canada.
CHARLES H. WACKER, Chicago. 111.

Executive Board
William P. Bancroft, Wilmington, Miss Zona Gale, Portage, Wis.

^^'- Edward Hatch, Jr., New York.

Henry A. Barker, Providence, R. I. Harold J. Rowland, Montclair, N. J.
Miss Mabel T. Boardman, Washing- Dr. Woods Hutchinson, New York.

ton, D. C. ^^g ^ J, McCrea, Chicago, III.

LEROY J. BOUGHNER, MmneapollS, », t rr -hr r^i

j^jjjQ ' ^ ' Miss Louise Klein Miller, Cleve-

land, Ohio.
J. C. Nichols, Kansas City, Mo.
Frederick Law Olmsted, Brookline,

Frank Chapin Bray, New York.

Arnold W. Brunner, New York.

H. K. Bush-Brown, Washington, D. C. Mass

Mrs. Caroline Bartlett Crane, John H. Patterson, Dayton, Ohio.

Kalamazoo, Mich. j^^.^ ^ jj. Scott, Perth, Ontario,
Charles M. Dow, Jamestown, N. Y. Canada.

Mrs. James S. Frick, Baltimore, Md. George Stephens, Charlotte, N. C

Address all general communications

to the Main Office of the Association

UNION TRUST BUILDING

WASHINGTON, D. C.

4 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION

administration of these parks. Each park had a superin-
tendent and such employees under him as the generosity of
Congress at the particular time happened to give. That gen-
erosity, very naturally and inevitably, as things are done m
this government, and in most others, varied with the political
influence and the energy of the advocates of the particular
park. If it so happened that the people immediately con-
nected with, or concerned in a particular park, were active
and influential, they secured larger appropriations than
others; but no attempt to make these things uniform or to
conform to any standard of administration had ever been
made, so far as I am able to discover. It was on that account
that we held last year at the Yellowstone National Park the
first National Conference on this subject ever held in this
country. At that Conference we had not only the superin-
tendents and administrative officials of all the National
Parks, but also representatives of the concessionaires. The
principal railroads concerned in affording transportation
facilities were also represented, and we took up and dis-
cussed in a very broad way the problems that confront
National Park administration,— the questions of making
them better known and more accessible to the public, and
the important questions of the treatment of the public after
it has arrived at the parks. There was then but one agency
by which any attempt to administer the parks in a collec-
tive manner was provided, and that agency was the Chief
Clerk of the Department of the Interior, who has acted
pretty much as the Department of the Interior itself has
acted, as a "catch-all" for the things that can find no con-
venient lodgment elsewhere. The only way in which the
problems in one park, or the solutions of those problems,
bore any relation to those in another, was through the
happenstance' that all had to go through the channel of
the Chief Clerk's office. If we had worked out a problem in
■connection with one park, it was always a mere chance if
the results benefited any other. You can see how unsound
and uneconomic such a system was. I have used the past
tense in telUng of these conditions, but I may say that the
conditions of last year are also the conditions of this year,
that there has been no improvement except as we have
brought it about at arm's length and by main force under the
same provisions of law and of appropriation acts that we

had before. _ t^-h r ^.i.

We did draw up and present to Congress a BiU for the

lO

NATIONAL PARKS— THE
NEED OF THE FUTURE

At the Eighth Annual Convention of the American Civic
Association, held at Baltimore, November 20, 191 2, the
principal address was deUvered by Rt. Hon. James Bryce,
British Ambassador, on the subject "National Parks — the
Need of the Future." Introducing the president of the
American Civic Association, Mr. J. Horace McFarland, and
later Mr. Bryce, Hon. Walter L. Fisher, Secretary of the
Interior, presiding, said:

OPENING ADDRESS OF
HON. WALTER L. FISHER

Secretary of the Interior
At Baltimore, November 20, 1912

Ladies and Gentlemen:

A year ago I had the honor of presiding at the meeting of
this Association, at which the President of the United States
spoke on the subject of a National Parks Bureau. I believe
we are looking forward this evening to an honor only tech-
nically second to that, a meeting at which the representative
of Great Britain in this country is to address you on the same
general subject.

At that meeting last year it was made very clear, I thought,
that our National Park administration was in urgent need
of some reorganization and some effective coordination. It
will do no harm to repeat briefly the situation of the National
Parks of this country. A year ago they were, as they had
been from the beginning, simply the creatures of separate
statutes, each one prescribing the rules under which a particu-
lar park should be organized, established and governed,
and each differing in important particulars from the others.
Except in so far as the first statute, passed by the Federal
Congress, had served as a model for some of the later acts,
there was no uniformity in the legislation, and no machinery
of any kind had been established for the government or

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